Our performance at Graduation went pretty well but personally, I felt disappointed with myself. I told most people that I was nervous, but that's a really big generalisation. Here's the real screw-up: my amplifier equalisation settings (vol, bass, middle, treble, crunch and so on) were different from the previous (rehearsal) day and so my guitar's distortion sounded like crap. Not only that, my guitar volume was overpowering. Throughout the performance, i was trying to restrict my energy so that Hafiz's guitar could be heard. There was little time to make adjustments as explained by Zulraihan in the 1st post. So yeahh, all that made me nervous. There were some solo parts where my guitar couldn't be heard because of either 1 out of 3 things:

1) I missed the string
2) I didn't pluck hard enough
3) the amp equalisation made it inaudible

And as if that wasn't bad enough, I played the wrong notes a couple of times. It was really embarassing. I was kind of in a state of shock after the performance. In fact, someone smsed me/us after our performance; "OMG, U GUYS RAAAWWWWK!", it went something like that. The reply I gave was "really?" (one word)...at that moment I subconsciously responded as though I was talking to someone in front of me. It was only after a while I realised that it was a really weird kind of thing to text-message someone. Oh well...

Hafiz was cool. Not many ppl can sing and play the guitar, it was really an eye-opener.

Zulraihan impressed the crowd with his drumming skills, as usual. I heard one guy saying he played like Lars (metallica's drummer)

Khairul was great too. He had to learn how to play songs at the last minute! He was really moving like a rocker.

As for me? "Well...your band got the biggest crowd. Don't worry, you were ok. It wasn't noticeable/that bad." This was the kinda response I got. Still, I'm grateful that our performance as a whole was good. I don't expect any praise on my part especially for screwing up. I feel guilty actually. Feel free to criticise me, I noe I sucked up there. I'm really open and I'm not depressed about it.

Enough on the performance, let's move on shall we...

We jammed in school on tuesday, it was really cool. We went crazy playing all the things we wanted to since we weren't confined to an hour like how we usually are at Wee Lee Bedok. The equipment's much better, except for the fact that the drums had only one paddle. I even parodied Hindustani songs (nope, I still hate them), the backstreet boys and Linkin Park's In The End. Zulraihan ran around the jamming corner while we played the 4 horsemen (Metallica song). Personally, I didn't think it was stupid. It was crazy, and going crazy is exactly what we're supposed to do when we jam. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fun, would it? =D

About our own song, Hafiz and Zulraihan seemed to like a slow part I came up with...but it sounded really emo! Come to think of it, I did come up with it a couple of months back, when I was feeling sad. Haha. Even the riffs I had in mind sounded sinister, also due to dark thoughts that I had/have. It's about some cool character in a fantasy world I created. Those ideas would probably make a cool video game. Think God of War + Legacy of Kain + Tenchu adventure game. Ok, going off-topic here..

I tried coming up with all sorts of riffs. Funny thing is, all of them were everything except metal. I even came up with a Spanish jingle! Somehow, it's hard coming up with something heavy and cool. In my opinion the riff Hafiz came up with was ok, but it was too basic unless we add some stuff later. It's not about making it complex, but it sounds so common to me that I can't help but realise how basic it sounds, people might not even recognise it as metal. It would sound like simple plan trying to come up with a metal riff. Not insulting his idea, but I think we should do more to make it work. The same goes for my slow part.

The metal scene looks glamourous and I daresay that there are more and more bands that claim to be metal but they just don't have the juice. There are bands like Dragonforce, whose songs I find to be too technical-their songs don't really give me the adrenaline rush that I expect when I listen to metal. Too much solo. On the other hand, there are bands that over-play the bass strings with a simple riff and it doesn't feel very exciting when you know what they're playing is soo simple.

It'd take too long to explain, but these are my thoughts to sum it up. A good metal song usually has a nice riff and an adequate solo (or two). The riff need not be complicated but one thing for sure, it has to be cool. It has to sound nice. Take the Red Hot Chili Peppers for example, they're not the band with the most professional guitarists/drummer, but they sure made it big. On most guitar tab websites, you'll find the most popular artist searches to be stuff like Metallica or RHCP!

I'm done. Wow, this post is really long. If I were to bitch, I bet I'd be really good at it. haha